Phil Taylor writes:
| >I'd wonder about this claim. My guess is that you're one of those
| >people who don't consider "major" and "minor" to be modes. But they
| >are, of course. I hear these two mode names fairly often. Of course,
| >people often say "major" for "mixolydian" and "minor" for "dorian",
| >but that's another issue.
|
| I tend to do that if I'm speaking loosely. I take "major" and "minor"
| to refer to the third of the scale, or more precisely to whether I
| use major or minor chords for the accompaniment. So ionian, mixolydian
| and lydian modes are all "major", while aeolian, dorian and the
| harmonic minor scales are all "minor".
This can be a fairly practical approach. I've seen the suggestion
that you can make a good case for distinguishing tunes that are truly
in a specific mode from those that are ambiguous. The terms "major"
and "minor" would then be used to indicate only the 3rd of the scale,
which is the critical note determining harmonies in most sorts of
music that have harmonies. Scales with the 1st, 3rd and 5th fixed and
others variable are fairly common. If you want to be specific about
the rest of the scale, you would then use the more specific mod name.
In the Scottish and Irish (and Balkan) tradition, there are a lot of
tunes that are truly mixolydian or dorian or phrygian or whatever. On
the other hand, there's the example of bluegrass music. It is derived
in great part from the Appalachian "hillbilly" music that is
primarily of Scottish origin. The older music uses mixolydian a lot,
but bluegrass really doesn't. Rather, it uses a single "major" scale
in which the 7th is variable, and intermixes the V and VII harmonies
at will. There are almost no bluegrass songs that are truly
mixolydian; they just use the low 7th sporadically, often with the
hign 7th in the adjacent measure. So for bluegrass, "major" is the
best term, with the qualification that it isn't the classical major,
but rather one with a variable 7th degree and frequent use of VII
chords based on the low 7th.
Of course, this would be considered overly picky and intellectual by
typical bluegrass musicians, with their carefully cultivated image of
the backwoods hick. So don't tell them I said anything, ok?
Then there are the tunes that don't use a 3rd at all. I've gotten an
interesting reaction in contradance and Irish circles by harmonizing
Tenpenny Bit (for example) with major chords. This works because the
3rd doesn't occur in (most people's versions of) this tune, so it's
not actually in major or minor. People are used to hearing it with
dorian harmonies, but mixolydian harmonies work equally well. There
are a number of other such tunes. This tune is really an example of
one of the two pentatonic modes used in a lot of British Isles music,
though there are a few passing 6ths to slightly confuse matters.
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